Freedom City now has a bboard. There's not much there yet. Feel free to create accounts for your approved characters. I'll add IC areas as they're needed (and if someone needs an IC area that's not there yet, let me know and I'll create it). As far as the OOC areas go, should I make an art and writing board for Freedom City related creative stuffeses?

Well, looks like neither Futureshock nor Firemind/Electric Slide can make the game this Saturday, and with 3/4ths of the character base missing, I'd say that definately justifies a cancel. At least this time I get to warn people in advance! And it definately makes me that much happier that we ran that short scene last Saturday after all. :)

I am really, really sorry for the scheduling confusion that lead to this week's session being cancelled. This is what I get for assuming that everyone is on the same page. I guess it's true, what they say about "assume..."

Anyway, in the future, I would like to have a set schedule for the game of 8-10 PM Saturday, EDT (perhaps running to 11 some nights, if no one has pressing engagements and we're in the middle of something).

If there is a better start time for all members, please suggest it.

Finally, would people prefer if I posted weekly reminders, and if so, what day of the week should they be posted on?

Good news, folks! Everyone has turned in at least one character sheet, which means we should be ready to get started, hopefully this Saturday, next Saturday at the latest. But before then, to make it easier on all of us, I'd like to encourage everyone to post their character descriptions. Physical appearance in and out of costume, any regular alternate forms (I'm looking at you, Firemind), basic voice description (and normal tone), any general impressions from body language, that sort of thing. Think of these as analogous to @descs on a MUSH, but as far as that goes, I would like to add a couple of reminders. You know the sorts of things people tend to say about fanfics where the first several PARAGRAPHS are spent describing the main OC? For that matter, I'm sure all of you have had personal experiences on MUSHes running into people who use their @descs to show off how polysyllabic their vocabulary is, and mostly succeed to actually obscure their appearance through their language, rather than paint any kind of an effective picture. No, no points will be given off for length, and if you need to take a while to properly describe things, that's fine. Really, you lot tend to be pretty good writers, so I don't figure I have much to worry about from you, but I figured I'd throw that out.

Feel free to posts pictures created with this if they can help us visualize the character, although I'd still like at least a short description to cover civilian identities, voices, that sort of thing.

The following article appears in the morning edition of The Freedom Ledger, the city's oldest and most traditionally pro-Superhero newspaper. Another version appears in The Daily Herald, but lacks the interview with Sarah Mickens and has a tone that is vaugely condemning of Electric Slide.

The home of Councilwoman Sarah Mickens was broken into at some time between 10:00 PM and Midnight last night, while the family was out of the city on vacation. Three of the four alleged intruders are currently in custody thanks to the efforts of the hero Electric Slide, a relative newcomer to Freedom City. Electric Slide was unable to prevent the death of Adrienne Palm, the Mickens live-in maid, or the escape of the forth intruder with an undisclosed amount in money and other valuables.

The police were initially alerted to the robbery when Electric Slide dropped the captured criminals off at the Hanover District police station. Two were unconscious, but the third reportedly made several apocalyptic boasts before he died unexpectedly. Autopsies have not yet been completed, but a capsule of some sort was found broken in his mouth, and poisoning is suspected. Similar capsules were found in the mouths of the two unconscious captives and were removed for examination.

Police investigation at the scene of the crime revealed that security measures were disabled from the inside, possibly by Palm. Both the front door and the back have been broken into, and while the alleged criminals in the front den (where Palm's body was later discovered) were apprehended by Electric Slide, the thief who broke open a vault in the master bedroom got away clean.

"I am shocked! Shocked and horrified that such a thing could happen in my own home!" said Sarah Mickens when contacted over the telephone. "I am, however, grateful to, erm, Electric Slide for his assistance, and have complete faith that our city's police department will be able to sort this matter out quickly." Sarah Mickens, who was not due to return to the city for another week, has chosen to cut her vacation short. She and her family should be arriving in the city tomorrow.

Many details are being withheld as the matter is still under investigation; however, inside sources have pointed to a similarity in clothing between the newly apprehended criminals and the suspect taken from the scene of the Hunter Natural History Museum robbery last week.

I suspect I forgot to mention this, but given the format of our game, I'm modifying the way hero points are handled in my campaign.

The default rules are that you start each session with one hero point (unless you have a feat that modifies that). During the course of an adventure, certain heroic behavior can earn you hero points, plus you can be awarded them for suffering setbacks (basically, I can use them to bribe you folks into not complaining when I hit you with the plot sledgehammer ;) ). Generally, you want to save these for use in the climatic scenes of an adventure.

Because I expect adventures to sometimes last over several sessions, I'm modifying the rule so that, rather than being reset to one at the start of each session, we will instead reset to one at the end of each "story arc." Just as a continuing series in the comics generally has story lines that last several issues but have disctinct start and stopping points, so the campaign will have adventures that last several sessions.

At the start of a new adventure, however, Hero Points will still be reset.

The following news article appears, in some form or another, in all the major news papers of Freedom City, most notably the Freedom Ledger and the Daily Herald. Actually, it would have appeared almost a week ago (about the same time Lunatron made her log post) except I forgot about it. -_-; Unlike the log, this may be considered IC information. Anyone who wishes to ICly investigate the matter further is free to contact me... and please include a completed character sheet. ;)

Mysterious Reptile Interferes With Museum Robbery

Authorities are baffled in the aftermath of last night's robbery at the Hunter Natural History Museum, which resulted in the death of security guard William Thompson, damage estimated to be in excess of $15,000, and the loss of an ornate blade from a khopesh (a bladed weapon, similar to a sword) believed to have originated in Ancient Egypt.

At 11:47 PM last night the North End 911 call center received a phone call reporting a robbery in progress at the Hunter Museum. When police units arrived on scene, they discovered that the wide glass doorway had been smashed, apparently from the inside. Inside the main rotunda a masked suspect was found unconscious and badly injured near a section of floor that appears to have been smashed by something very large. The suspect was transported to Freedom Medical Center where he later died, although cause of death is still uncertain.

A museum employee, whose name is currently being with-held, claims to have been on her way out of the museum when she noticed something apparently wrong with Thompson. While investigating, she was attacked by four masked, armed individuals, one female and three males. While running for cover, the employee dialed 911 on her cell phone. At this point, according to her, a "dragon" appeared "out of nowhere," swatted one of the suspected thieves, smashed the floor, and vanished.

Eye-witnesses outside of the museum also reported what appeared to be a very large reptile of some sort through the museum's glass front.

By the time police arrived on the scene, the other three thieves had escaped. The museum employee and other eye-witnesses all report that at least one of them appeared to vanish quite suddenly. This matter is still under police investigation. The Hunter Natural History Museum is currently closed for repairs, with re-opening announcements still forth-coming.